Deck the Halls
by After Today
Summary: Fluffly little Everlark oneshot. Modern-day AU. Katniss and Peeta decorate for Christmas.


I'm not a big holiday person.

Okay, I'll rephrase that: I'm not a big fan of anything garish, commercial, obnoxious, and inescapable, and from pretty much the day Halloween ends (now THERE'S a holiday I can get behind, but that's not the point), it's Christmas, Christmas, Christmas.

To that, I say bah, humbug.

We've never really had enough money to celebrate it, anyway. Prim and I, we were lucky to get maybe some new clothes under the tree that I'd begrudgingly cut down in the park nearby and hoist home, upright and taking up way too much space in the already too-small living room. I tried to get excited about it, for Prim's sake, but honestly, it was pretty much just another day for me.

That is, until I moved in with Peeta.

Let me just say that our apartment is barely bigger than my mom's house is. There's a living room, a small kitchen, and then our bedroom and bathroom. Nothing showy. Just big enough for the two of us, and that's how we like it.

So you can imagine my surprise when I walked in the door after a grocery run the day before Thanksgiving, grumbling about the fact that my mother actually expected me to cook something to bring to the table for the feast. She knew as well as I did that any cooking or baking that happened in our joke of a kitchen would be entirely Peeta's doing, so I figured the least I could do was buy the ingredients for him.

Huffing and puffing up the stairs with four bags of groceries, because Mr. Picky Pants has a _very specific _brand of flour and chocolate and milk and everything else in the entire grocery store, I struggled to find the keys in my pocket. Second trips were for the weak. My arms were pretty sore, though. I somehow managed to stick the key in the lock, jimmy it a little, and push it open.

Immediately, the door swung in, hitting something in the way. "What the…?" I walked in, looking around.

"Jesus. Peeta?"

There were _boxes_ everywhere. Plastic ones with tight-fitting lids, cardboard shipping boxes taped shut and reused twenty times, little shoeboxes sitting on our counters and tables and couches…. And they all had Christmas shit in them.

I'm not just talking about, like, ornaments and stuff. That was the extent of our decoration at my mom's house – we had some little ceramic orbs that we would hang up on the branches of the tree with pieces of twine, and that was it. Oh no. This was worse. Much worse. These boxes were overflowing with tinsel. Gingerbread men spilled out, perfect painted-on faces leering at me. Nutcrackers marching in single file lines. Like, six different wreaths of different colors and textures and materials.

It was like a Macy's threw up in our living room.

"Katniss!"

I could hear Peeta, but I couldn't see him. "Where…are you?" I said cautiously, shutting the door with my foot. I walked into the kitchen and tried to find counter space to put the grocery bags. When that didn't work – our kitchen was currently being used for an insane and headache-inducing tangle of lights – I dropped them on the floor, remembering a second too late that there was a carton of eggs in one of them. _Oops._

From that vantage point, I caught a glimpse of him. He was up on a step ladder, stringing garland above the door frame that led to our room. He had freaking _antlers _on his head.

I swear, it's a good thing I _like _the fact that he's an insufferable dork.

He grinned at me and jumped off the ladder. "What do you think?"

"Um, it's a little early for Christmas, isn't it?" I said cautiously, coming over to meet him. I practically tripped over a little rocking chair filled with stuffed animals sporting knit hats with tassels sewn on at the tips. _…Seriously?_

He scoffed at me. "No such thing." He kissed me on the forehead, and then looked over at the kitchen. "Um, did you just drop the bag with the eggs on the tile floor?"

I quickly changed the subject, picking up a strand of tinsel on the floor and running it through my fingers. "Where on earth did you get all of this from?"

He shrugged. "I had a few boxes at my parents' house, stuff they haven't touched in years. The rest, I bought a few days ago and just stuffed in the closet. I was gonna wait until tomorrow after we ate dinner with your family, but I was too excited." He must've noticed the look on my face, because he paused, and added, "Too much?"

"It's just a little overwhelming."

"Yeah, well, once we get all this crap out of the boxes and onto the walls, it'll be amazing. I promise." He smiled at me. "Sorry. I just really love Christmas." He paused again, and after a moment, said, "Christmas every year, those days are really the only good memories of my childhood, you know? We always got good presents, but that didn't really matter. My dad would make fruitcake, which we all hated but we'd eat it anyway, and he'd make these awesome cinnamon rolls that we all actually loved, and my brothers and I would go and play with our toys, you know? And no one fought, my parents actually looked they tolerated each other and maybe even liked us. And of course, the next day, we'd all go back to fighting, my brothers would punch each other and me over whose toys was whose, and it was chaos, but then we'd just start it all over again the next year." He sighed.

I couldn't think of anything to say. I smiled sympathetically at him. "Well, I'm glad that it's something that you enjoy," I said, somewhat noncommittally. He frowned.

"That's the thing, Katniss. I don't just want it to be something that I enjoy. I want you to like it, too. I want to share it with you."

I sighed. "Peeta, it's nothing personal, I just don't have that same connection. It doesn't really…mean anything to me." He raised his eyebrows.

"You didn't like Christmas even as a kid?"

"Not really," I admitted. "Even when my dad was alive, money was tight. After, it got even worse, and we never had any money for anything. I'm pretty sure me cutting down our own trees was, like, five different kinds of illegal. And Prim and I each got a pair of pajamas, a new dress, and a pair of socks. Every year. Which was great, don't get me wrong. Except maybe for the dresses. But it just wasn't too exciting." I didn't want to add that now it was pretty annoying to have to see all the commercials and posters and billboards advertising happy smiling kids that didn't make me want to go out and buy stuff. It made me want to punch things.

He was silent for a minute. I sighed again. I was always saying the wrong things. He was always so excited about everything and I just didn't have the energy.

"Well," he replied after a long minute, "maybe we can change that."

I kind of scoffed at him. I couldn't help it. I had made it twenty years without needing any kind of emotional attachment to a dumb day, and I didn't really expect that to change.

He cleared off a place on the couch big enough for him and me. He plopped down, and motioned for me to do the same. I obliged, all the while thinking about the groceries sitting on the floor that needed to be refrigerated.

"Katniss."

"Hmm?"

I could practically feel him smiling. When you know someone, really know them, you don't have to look at them to see what their face looks like. You can feel them relax, hear their voices change. If I were to go blind tomorrow, I could probably describe Peeta's facial expressions in great detail just by hearing his voice. Then again, he's a very expressive person. Another thing that we don't have in common, but it's something I like about him, even though I can't parallel it, myself.

"You didn't like me at first, either. I managed to get you to change your mind about how you felt about me, so I think I can manage to get you to at least like Christmas. You just need a little convincing."

I protested, "I didn't not like you!" I hesitated, and then clarified, "Well, I didn't _dislike _you."

"Yeah. That's my point. You tolerated me. And now look where we are. You tolerate me while living in the same space. That's progress!" I whacked him on the shoulder, and he picked a throw pillow to deflect my blows. He laughed, and leaned back on the couch, letting his arm fall around my shoulder easily.

"You know, this is what I was looking forward to most, about living with you." He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, and added, "Well, aside from all of the added benefits and perks. Like the fact that there's only one bed. And one shower." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, and I made to smack him again. "Hey. I'm being serious here. The holidays, it's for family, you know? And….you're my family now. It's just something that has always made me happy. Pretty much the only thing that makes me happier than Christmastime is seeing _you _happy. So to see you happy about Christmas would practically make me die of a happiness aneurysm. Seriously, I could curl up and die right then and there."

I chuckled. "Well, you might have to wait for a while for that to happen. You know, like, a year. Or five. Or never."

"Where's your open-mindedness, Katniss?" He kissed me on the forehead, and then got up. "Okay," he conceded, putting his hands up in surrender. "I'm not going to ask you to go caroling or make homemade wrapping paper out of potato stamps and parchment." I grimaced at the very thought. "However," he continued, "All I ask is that you at least give it a try. Help me put some of this stuff up. I promise, I'll try to make it as fun as I possibly can. Just don't pass it off so easily."

I sat and considered it for a minute. Well, it was worth a shot, anyway. "Alright. Fine." I stood up. He grinned.

"Knew it." He dodged another smack – he was getting too good at that. "Okay, can you go put the groceries up, and I'll finish getting the stuff out?"

"Fine."

In as long as it took me to walk back over to the kitchen – I repeat, our space is very small – Peeta had somehow managed to get Christmas music blasting over our radio. I shook my head in bemused resignation.

The next two hours were a whirlwind of silver and red and green. Peeta hung up strands of paper-cut gingerbread men on the walls. An advent calendar went on the wall by the door, even though the first day was still around a week away. He would chat animatedly about the history of the things that he got from home, turning them around reverently in his hands. The new things, he would get excited about all over again. I think the idea of making new memories to shove those full with really made him happy.

I'm the same way he is, you know. I'm not totally selfish. Seeing him happy makes me happy, too.

And so, no matter how much I tried to fight it, I started enjoying myself.

He stuck the hooks of red, round ornaments on the tip of his nose, balancing them carefully. "Look, Katniss, I'm Rudolph!" He would dance over to me, singing the words to the songs reverberating off of our thin walls, purposefully off-key to make me laugh. Which he succeeded at. I couldn't help it. He was so lame and like such a big kid at heart, it was too hard not to.

He stuck his reindeer antlers on my head. "On Dasher! On Dancer! On Comet, and Vixen!" He smacked my butt, and I yelped.

"That is NOT how Santa drives his sleigh!" I protested.

"I could whip you, if that's what you prefer," he immediately retorted. Somehow, it sounded like he had been waiting for an opportunity to use that one for way too long. Another suggestive eyebrow waggle. Another well-deserved smack on the shoulder.

Somehow, he convinced me to go get our tree. Four weeks early. I don't know how. Momentary lapse of better judgment. He picked one out, saying it was the "cutest," which basically meant "it's cheap and small enough to fit through the front door." Or so we thought, until we actually tried – turns out neither one of us actually knew for a fact how wide our door frame was. A pile of needles on the welcome mat, and in our hair, and on the floor, a splinter in my thumb, and pollen in Peeta's nose, making him sneeze like crazy….but somehow, we managed to get it standing.

Peeta stood back, admiring it reverentially. "This is my favorite part," he said softly. I looked at him, and the expression on his face was so soft and so indescribably content that it made me melt. Any resignation I had left washed away like a wave.

"Okay. So what do we do?"

He delicately, masterfully untangled the strands of lights and draped them around the branches. When he plugged them in, they lit up in incredible, vibrant hues: primary colors, then secondary, then flashing over to white. "Garland next," he instructed, pointing to the red strand of beads coiled up on the ground. I copied his movements with the lights, going from high to low, wrapping around the tree. He followed with the silvery tinsel, but not until after he wrapped it around my neck like a feather boa and flicked my face with the end of it.

"Ornaments now."

He helped me pick places for each decoration, thoroughly explaining the merits of placing each little glass ball and figurine in strategic places. He moved the pieces that he thought I would be liable to knock off with my clumsiness when he thought I wasn't looking. I didn't call him out on it.

He disappeared for a moment while I was finishing up the last of one of the boxes, hanging the hooks carefully on the progressively thinner branches.

"Katniss."

"What?" I turned around. He had a little dough disk in his hand, cut into a perfect circle. He had been baking stuff all day for the next day's Thanksgiving feast, but I had thought it had been, I don't know, pies or something. "What is that?"

"It's our first tradition," he said quietly. He shrugged. "It's kinda dumb. But you stick your thumb in-" he demonstrated with his own, wiggling it a bit, and when he pulled his hand away, a perfect fingerprint remained, "-and it's a keepsake." He gently took my hand. He kissed it gently, looking up at me with those big, soft eyes. Then, he took my thumb, and pressed it into the dough at an angle that, when the two prints were put together, made a heart. "Our first Christmas." He smiled.

He turned to head back to the kitchen. "I'll stick this in the oven for a few minutes, and it'll stay for years. I'll fix some hot chocolate, too."

I sat on the couch, staring after him, feeling some kind of fuzziness deep in my gut that I couldn't describe. It was pure, unadulterated happiness that felt like it was going to bubble up and pour out of me.

I felt it, then.

The magic.

I didn't know if it was that ever-elusive, fabled "Christmas magic," or if it was just the effect that Peeta had on me, with his incredible gentility, his ability to make me see things in an entirely different light, his ability to make me fall in love with pretty much anything, but most of all, him. I fell in love with him a little more, for a slightly different reason, every day. When we had started living together, I was a little cautious. Nervous, even. That's a big step. For a lot of people, it's make-or-break. And now, I couldn't be more sure that this is exactly where I was supposed to be. Forever, if I could manage it.

"Peeta," I said softly, not even sure if he could hear me. Of course, I wasn't so lucky. His head popped up from around the corner.

"What?" He headed my way, two steaming cups of chocolate in his hands.

"I feel it," I said. I looked around at our living room. It was incredible. It felt like a completely different place. "I understand, now. At least, better than I did before."

If I had thought I was happy, it was nothing in comparison to the expression on his face at that moment. He put the mugs on the coffee table, now devoid of boxes, and crawled up on the couch. He cupped my face in his hands, still warm from carrying the mugs, and kissed me so hungrily that for a single moment, I forgot to breathe.

He broke away, breathless. "Katniss."

"Yes?"

He sat up, digging around in his pocket. "I was going to wait," he started, tripping over his words, suddenly so nervous he couldn't speak straight. "I was going to wait until Christmas, but then I decided that there was no way I could wait that long. My second plan was for tomorrow, but…I can't. I have to. Right now. Before this moment goes away." He pulled a little box out of his pocket. I knew what was inside before he even opened it. A ring, not too flashy, a simple band, a small diamond. But with so much meaning behind it. So much love.

I expected him to have a whole speech written, about our futures and our love and all that we had left to see together in the world. But all that he could get out as he slid to one knee on the ground, amid empty cardboard boxes and strands of tinsel, was, "Marry me?"

To which I, of course, replied, "Of course."


End file.
